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Saturday, 5 May 2012

Play-dough: make or buy?

Do you make your own play-dough? I do.... but not so I can show off to my mummy friends. I do it because I have weird play-dough psychology. If I buy it, every little bit must be put back in it's airtight container after use, nothing is to be left out! When the play-dough is homemade I am totally laid back about it. You want to keep your play-dough stars out to go dry and crusty – sure. You want to leave some in the garden to get wet and slimy – go for it. You want to paint it and get biscuit crumbs in it – no worries.

It does help that I have found a great no-cook recipe from the Imagination Tree. From experience I always use table salt (rather than cooking salt) to ensure a smooth texture and I also add the food colouring to the hot water.

Here are two projects where our homemade play-dough never made it's way back into the tub.

A little garden...
We created a little garden world from a plastic takeaway sushi box that came with decorative plastic grass. Cakey filled the container with pink play-dough, she added mini paddle pop sticks and stuck flower stickers to some of them. We made a little swing from sticks, a straw, paper clips and sticky tape. Experimenting Mom has made a much better swing using an egg carton for a seat. Cakey loved her little garden, she did not want to pack it up. She kept it on display in her room until the play-dough got really crusty.

A little beach...
This was inspired by a lovely under the sea play-dough scene from Nurturestore. Following a trip to the beach, Cakey wanted to make something beachy but we had no sand or yellow play-dough. Our solution was to paint our blue and purple play-dough yellow and cover the whole lot in glitter!

LOVE IT! Thanks for the link Ali. I too am more free with the homemade playdough. I love these little playdough worlds. My Little one loves making food from playdough. I loved the glittery dough and the little swing!

My pleasure Mansi, when I saw your swing I thought 'why didn't we do it that way'. We had to stick the little animal onto the cardboard swing with playdough but he could have just comfortably sat in an egg carton.

I make it - why? because I can't stand the colours being mixed however if I've made it myself then the colours can be mixed all over the place and when they become brown... what can I do? I can make some more beautifully coloured stuff as well.

Hi I'm Ali, a Mum to two gorgeous girls – Cakey (5) and Boo (3). My kids love paper, paint, glue, glitter, playdough, mud, sticky tape and anything that makes a big mess! I am a crafty type person too and together we love to make things. This blog deals with the activities we do to make the day more fun.Read more here